The Lost Steersman (Steerswoman Series) (66 page)

She tied the talisman in the kerchief at her belt, put Janus’s left arm across her shoulder, which he allowed; it lay loosely across her.

He stank. He had been unwashed for weeks. She put her arm about his waist and held tightly.

“Let’s go,” she said. More because she took one shuffling step herself, and they both would have fallen if he did not move, he walked.

And when he did, Rowan realized that even injured, she was, at the present, much stronger than he was. But that would change.

She did fall; and she soon lost count of how many times it happened. It began to be routine.

She found herself making various small noises, intermittently, which first vaguely annoyed her, then began to seem merely a part of the environment.

Presently she noticed that it was sometimes better to let herself fall rather than to force herself forward when her energy was spent. It allowed her to recover a bit quicker, or so it seemed. Possibly the phenomenon was entirely illusory.

Eventually, she stayed down for a long time, during which Janus first merely stood by and then finally sat in the sand.

She realized that the growing darkness was outside herself, not inside. On hands and one foot, she got herself up to the dunes and wrapped herself in her cloak. The instant she decided to sleep, she did so; it was like a door closing.

When she woke, it was night. Starlight lit the foam edges of small breakers; they seemed to move according to some formula with which she was familiar, but could not be bothered to solve at the moment. The entire sky lay before her, each star voicelessly speaking its own name; the ocean past the breakers seemed another sky, starless. She was very cold.

When she woke again, she was not cold, and there was shuddering yellow light: a fire nearby, and Janus beside it. She was sorry for the fire; it made the stars less bright.

A number of little creatures were moving at the edge of the waves. She could not see them, but she heard clicking and chitinous creaks.

She thought there was a small, hot animal under her cloak with her; and only by an act of concentration so intense it seemed physical did she recognize it as the pain in her left leg. It seemed to have acquired a spherical boundary and its own identity, separate from her own. She could not recall whether this was good or bad. For no reason she could think of, the left side of her nose hurt, and there was a line of pins and needles along the left side of her jaw.

And Janus was looking at her. It startled her. She did not know why, until she saw that his face showed some dim expression, where before there had been none. She began to wonder if she were in danger.

The expression was one of mild and distant speculation. Then, equally faintly, he seemed to reach some conclusion, and turned away to regard the sea.

She realized that she could still hear the demon city. They had traveled less than four miles; perhaps as little as one.

She suddenly felt very hot, but knew it would be foolish to toss off her cloak. She found the water sack, and drank, and slept.

When she woke, she was drenched in sweat and hot, except for her fingers. The bandage on her left leg showed a wide dark line where the burn lay underneath, damp in the center, stiff at the edges. When she attempted to shift her leg, the cloth lifted free, and she made an unpleasant noise that she did not like to hear and wished would stop.

When it did, her mind was unnaturally clear.

She realized that she had not relieved herself for a long time and did not need to. At the least, that was convenient.

When she attempted to stand, she found she was too weak; and then, she was standing. She discovered, startled, that Janus had helped her up.

They regarded each other, he with the same mildly speculative expression; she did not know what her own face showed. Then he looked west down the beach, looked back at her, and moved to her right side.

After a moment, and because there was simply nothing else to do, she put her arm about his waist; he put his arm about her shoulder, and they made their clumsy way down the beach, her dragging one leg, half stumbling against him with each step.

She fell even more often, but not always to the ground; sometimes he held her as she regained her balance.

She thought they were walking in the dark; she wondered if this were true. She became interested in the sound of their steps. It was a remarkably curious pattern: crunches, hisses, and a long hiss separate from the others.

She could not hear the demon city. She said, “I can’t hear the demon city.”

She stopped walking. It was hard to do.

She wondered why she had stopped.

She opened her eyes. Light hurt. The view was flat, without depth. The only colors were yellow, white, blue, black.

Something in her mind shifted, matched, shouted.

Pattern. The landscape.

“I think I left some food around here,” she said and fainted.

It was still daylight, but she lay in shade. Long shadows pointed east. A whistle-spider attempted a tune, found itself alone, and went silent. High above, a hawkbug climbed the wind like a kite, pink wings glittering.

Every part of her was cold; every part of her was damp with sweat.

She turned her head; she could not integrate what she saw. The world was sideways. She closed her eyes, felt them flick back and forth behind her lids. When she moved her head back, the sensation subsided. She lay watching the hawkbug.

She attempted to speak, but made no sound. She tried harder and said, quite clearly but distantly, “I know I left some food near here.”

His voice came: “Probably.”

“You should look for it.”

“I don’t think so.”

With very great effort, she turned her head again.

He had built another fire, and was feeding it with sections of tanglebrush. He had, she noted, the sense to strip the leaves off first.

“I don’t,” she said, then forgot what she intended to say. “I think,” she began again; then felt a rush of heat through her body, and could do nothing but lie still under it.

Janus said, “Take your time.”

She did. “I think”— but she could not finish the statement.

“Yes,” he said, “your leg is infected. Inevitable, really.”

“Why are you speaking? ”

He took his time replying. He continued to feed the fire slowly, using sections unnecessarily small. His image wavered in her sight; but she saw him shrug. “No reason not to anymore.”

Was there before? she asked, then realized she had not asked it but only thought it. She decided to speak again, gave the matter careful attention, prepared exactly what she was going to say, drew several breaths. “You really should look for that food, Janus, I don’t feel particularly hungry, but I know I need to eat, and you do, too, I marked the cache with some stones— it’s just past the dune line and a little west.” Many more words came out than she had planned. But when she breathed again, more came. “You’re not in your right mind. I know you can’t see it, but you’re not, and you really do need to do what I say— ” She was abruptly exhausted and nauseous, and she lay with her eyes closed until it passed. “You should look for that food,” she said.

“There’s no point.”

“I have no intention of dying!”

His voice was quiet, mild. “I really don’t see how you can avoid it.”

Somewhat later, he said, “There’s water, if you want it.”

She had to think long to find the word. “Yes.”

He held her head while she drank, lowered it gently when she was done. She looked up at him; he was studying her with, it seemed, kindly interest.

She said, “Why?”

“You’ll have to be more specific.”

Why everything? “Why water but not food?”

“Because you don’t feel hungry, but you feel thirsty. No reason to suffer more than necessary.” He rose, stood above her, gazing out at some distance invisible to her. “I think that when you’re gone,” he said, “I’ll just walk into the sea. Yes.” He nodded to himself. “Perhaps something will eat me, eventually.”

“If it does, it will die.”

“All the better.”

Then it was dark, and it occurred to her that she ought to simply go and get the food herself; so she rose and walked, and found it exactly where she had left it. She brought it back to camp, having no difficulty at all walking in the night; and this was because there was a strange, cool, beautiful light in the sky high above her.

When she arrived at the camp, she discovered that she had dreamed the entire event.

But she was sitting up, her left leg stretched before her, visibly swollen beneath the bandages, and her right knee drawn up.

Janus was by the fire. He seemed always to be beside the fire. He watched the flames.

She said, “Murderer.”

He looked up. “I used to think that. Now I think I’m a soldier.”

“There is no war.”

He turned back to the fire. “Yet.”

“Soldiers only fight in war.”

“Well, then, I am a murderer after all.” He seemed indifferent to the matter. “Although,” he went on, “if you kill the child that will later become the enemy soldier, what is that?”

“Arrogance.”

He made a noise, a small laugh; and he spoke again, but she was suddenly weary and let her head drop.

Somewhat later, by the change in stars, he was either speaking again or still speaking. “Shut up,” she said.

She thought he turned to her, but could only see a dark shape where he sat. The fire was too bright, leaving blue spots and streaks on her vision. He said something, something about the future.

“What?”

“It’s not a good thing to know the future.”

“Change,” she said; the future can be changed.

He seemed to understand her. “You can’t change the whole world, Rowan.”

“All the time.” The world was changing all the time, was
supposed
to change all the time. That was important; why was that so important?

“Look around you.”

“It’s dark.”

“Then remember,” he said, but she was suddenly thirsty, not for water but for air; and she leaned her head back and drank the cold night into her lungs.

“They can’t go further south,” he said.

“Who?”

“The people in Southport. I never got there. It was supposed to be my route. I read everything about it.”

Tanglebrush, she remembered reading at the Annex: tanglebrush in Southport. Outskirts life. Demon Lands life.

It would stop them. No redgrass. No goats.

The world is supposed to change, all the time.

The stars were going out; no— clouds. “Rain.”

He glanced up. “Not for a while, yet.”

“Put up,” she said, “the tarp.”

He turned to study her. “Let’s wait,” he said. “By the time the rain comes . . . I think you won’t need shelter any longer.”

After a long silence, she said something. She could not hear what it was. She wondered, and so she said it again. “No trees.” What an odd thing to say . . . and then she remembered.

Wulfshaven, market day, a tinker’s fortune-telling booth. She and a friend, Artos, laughing, having their fortunes told. “You will die far from your home,” the tinker had told her, “and someone will plant a tree on your grave.” And Artos, first amused, then intrigued. But Rowan was from the north; she had the manners and accent of the north; and in the north, one did that. One planted trees on graves. The tinker knew this; he was playing them. No mystical ability.

North. The cold, hard desert.

She was not aware she had spoken; but Janus replied, “Yes, and west.”

Mountains. Impassable.

East: the Outskirts. Beyond: blackgrass prairie and no life that would support humans.

North, where the only life that grew was life brought by humans; where the funeral groves were planted as far out as possible, and the farms, carefully fertilized, cultivated, slowly grew out to embrace and overtake them. And beyond the desert?

“The same,” she said.

“What?”

She found she was looking at stars again; the ground was hard against her back. “South,” she said. The same.

He was beside her. “Beyond,” she asked him, “beyond the mountains?”

He smiled down at her with, it seemed, pride. “There, you see? Now you understand. We’re surrounded.” He looked out at the dark land. “They fit, here. We don’t. And all the way around the Inner Lands— oh, if not demons, something else or someone else. Life that fits.

“But we grow, we’re made to grow. And some day we’ll come up against them. And we’ll fight. And they’ll win. Because they fit, and we don’t. It’s their world, Rowan. It’s a Demon World.”

She said, “Routine Bioform Clearance.”

“What?”

She could see the Eastern Guidestar through the clouds past his shoulder. It was different from the other stars; she could not remember why. It seemed to her like a person, a strange person who could kill or help, and was supposed to help. A person who did not feel or think as she did.